The popular
instinct of national unity, which seemed so weak, proved to be
strong enough to defeat the secession forces, to trample out the
confederacy, and maintain the unity of the nation and the
integrity of its domain.
The people can act only as they exist, as they are, not as they
are not. Existing originally only as distributed in distinct and
mutually independent colonies, they could at first act only
through their colonial organizations, and afterward only through
their State organizations. The colonial people met in
convention, in the person of representatives chosen by colonies,
and after independence in the person of representatives chosen by
States. Not existing outside of the colonial or State
organizations, they could not act outside or independently of
them. They chose their representatives or delegates by colonies
or States, and called at first their convention a Congress; but
by an instinct surer than their deliberate wisdom, they called it
not the Congress of the confederate, but of the United States,
asserting constitutional unity as well as constitutional
multiplicity. It is true, in their first attempt to organize a
general government, they called the constitution they devised
Articles of Confederation, but only because they had not attained
to full consciousness of themselves; and that they really meant
union, not confederation, is evident from their adopting, as the
official style of the nation or new power, united, not
confederate States.
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